English National Opera has betrayed British talent

Our top-flight singers have been shunted aside in ENO's new season. It is a disgrace, says Rupert Christiansen

London Coliseum English National Opera
London Coliseum: the home of English National Opera Credit: Photo: Reuters

Although shackled in "special measures" by Arts Council England (ACE) and cautiously led by interim governance, English National Opera has nevertheless presented a remarkably successful season, justly earning the company critical plaudits, full houses and a shower of awards.

Special congratulations are due to the Artistic Director John Berry for fighting his corner. But managerial and financial problems remain, and as yet no clear strategy to resolve the chaos – or square the circle – has emerged from any quarter.

The 2015-16 season, starting in September, has just been announced. It shows clear signs of retrenchment, offering about 30 fewer performances than the current season, and only 12 operas (one as yet unannounced) as opposed to this season’s 16. Go back two decades and the annual figures hovered around 200 performances of over 20 operas.

Such a continuing reduction in productivity will make it harder to justify the maintenance of a full-time orchestra and chorus, both of which look under-employed: this is an issue which could become explosive over the coming months, especially as another major cut in the ACE grant kicks in.

Highlights for 2015-16 include large-scale new productions of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and The Force of Destiny, both of which will be conducted by the incoming Music Director Mark Wigglesworth, but overall the programme looks quite thin and significant gaps in the casting suggest that it has been chopped and changed at the last minute. Perhaps the announcement of a musical, delayed until the summer, will provide the element of sparkle that is so far lacking.

What continues to be distressing is the reliance on unnecessary foreign imports. There is a clear contradiction between Wigglesworth’s proclaimed pride in ENO being “our national opera company” and the fact that every new production is headlined by at least one American singer. Only one of these stagings will be in the hands of a British-based director. Norma will be conducted by an American, as will a revival of The Barber of Seville; La Bohème by Xian Zhang from Dandong, China.

Meanwhile top-flight native talents such as Lucy Crowe, Mary Bevan, Allan Clayton and Anthony Gregory are shunted into revivals of The Magic Flute and The Mikado, and potential stars such as Marcus Farnsworth and Elizabeth Llewellyn don’t even get a look in. One doesn’t need to be a UKIP xenophobe or Little Englander to feel that this is wrong, wrong, wrong and a betrayal of the spirit of ENO’s Founding Fathers.

British tenor Allan Clayton (left) performs 'Written On Skin' by British composer George Benjamin and directed by Britain's Katie Mitchell (AFP)

Yes, I have said this before, and I do not apologise for saying it again. The musicians that we train in our conservatoires, the directors and designers that come out of our universities and art schools should be a higher priority in ENO’s casting process, and smart deals with big American agents should be curtailed. Imagine the uproar if the same situation prevailed at the National Theatre or RSC.

Mary Bevan in 'The Firework-Maker’s Daughter' (Robert Workman)

The larger perspective is ENO’S overweening ambition to be seen as a major world player rather than an organisation whose mission is to focus on home produce and home markets, and it is to be hoped that a more stable regime will address the question of what it means to be “English” and “National” more vigorously. At present it means nothing more than a commitment to sing operas in translation (unless they are by the American Philip Glass).

But with an embattled Artistic Director, a Chairman and Chief Executive empowered only by a temporary mandate, a weak and divided board that has historically made a series of catastrophic errors, a new Music Director anxious to appear feisty and the Arts Council breathing hotly down everyone’s neck with demands for more solid financial returns and administrative competence, the most pressing issue must be meeting box office targets and developing ancillary income streams. So next year’s programme has a lot of weight riding on it, and it’s not clear to me how much it can deliver.